Observations on politics, news, culture and humor

Vile neoconnery

This won’t be the first time I’ve discussed how much I hate Michael Rubin’s cold, Islamophobic, neocon writing, but his unsourced post on how five Turkish Islamists killed in Afghanistan symbolizes Turkey’s conversion from ally to foe in the war on terror got my blood boiling. Rubin is hardly an original. Ever since Israel raided the Turkish-flagged Gaza flotilla, neocons have been trampling each other in a race to the exit from supporting America’s Turkish alliance.

Somehow, Rubin managed to elevate his post today to a level of awfulness far above that of the normal shameful neocon attack. Money quote:

According to SITE Intelligence, a group that does an excellent job monitoring Islamist websites and publications, a Turkish extremist group has announced that five Turkish fighters were killed when U.S. or NATO forces bombed terrorists in Paktika (sorry, no link possible; SITE is a subscription service and the jihadist group’s website is unavailable in the United States).

It seems increasingly that Turks — the citizenry if not the government — are rooting for if not fighting on the wrong side of the war on terrorism. Turkey has become more an adversary than an ally and certainly a security risk. The Turkish government has created a milieu that encourages anti-Western incitement and support for terrorism. Turkish terrorists are becoming frequent participants in the world’s jihadi hot spots.

Stop for a second and notice that there’s “no link possible.” How convenient. Then consider just how dumb Rubin thinks we must be. According to his logic, a few dead Turkish Islamists in Afghanistan signals that the Turkish public and maybe even the government have gone pro-terrorist. By the same logic, shouldn’t we consider the American public to be pro-terrorist? After all, John Walker Lindh was an American Islamist captured in Afghanistan. Anwar al-Awlaki is an American citizen inciting hate from Yemen. Adam Gadahn, one of Al-Qaeda’s leading PR figures, is also from the U.S. If there are American terrorists, does that mean America has become a security risk to itself?

Rubin is a sick puppy. He would gladly see us get rid of our only strategically valuable moderate Muslim ally, Turkey. At the same time, he is an Afghanistan hawk and favors our continuing involvement with Pakistan, an ally far less moderate in its Islam and far less trustworthy than Turkey. And why? Because Turkey made the mistake of crossing Israel.